In message , Starlord
writes
There's going to be a town meeting on 11/12 here in Rosamond and the subjest is
1st, a new higher fee to home owners to pay for street lighting. 2nd, the
paying for new street lighting in a park and in areas where there is none at
this time.

I will be there and I want to have some good ideas on hand to give to them to
save money. Ya, I know that No Lights would be best, but the powers
that be here
are going to put them in no matter what, so I want to give them ideas of what
KIND of lights to use.

You probably won't win on this one, but orange low pressure sodium
lights in full cut off fixtures have by far the highest efficiency of
any street lighting system. And they give fairly smooth diffuse lighting
with soft shadows.

It is unlikely in the US that you will be able to persuade people to
accept LPS lights though and you will likely end up with dazzling HPS
using twice as much electricity. However, you might just win the day
with the energy saving argument if your townsfolk are moderately
environmentally friendly.

I want to hear your ideas too, to see if I can add them into what I will give
them. I'll be printing up my fact sheet.

The material I submitted to the government select committee on light
pollution and astronomy in the UK is now online at:

http://www.nezumi.demon.co.uk/lightp...tpollution.htm

There are tables showing the efficacy of various lighting systems and
references to various other useful documents.

The big problem in the UK is that most of the luminaires are truly
dreadful and send nearly 30% of the light straight up into the sky.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown